


Scared at Night

by resistate



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Series, Sibling Bonding, Siblings, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3323540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/resistate/pseuds/resistate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something wakes a young Dana Scully from a sound sleep. She's determined to find out what.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scared at Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyryk (s_k)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/gifts).



> Thanks go out to the wonderful wendelah1 for beta reading.

It's dark in her room at night, but not so dark that Dana can't see the shadows lurking in the patterned curtains at her window. The wind outside makes the curtains move and Dana can see wild trees swaying and wild creatures playing. She's only a little bit scared, and it's the pleasant, satisfying kind of scared.

Melissa has the bed by the window because she's older than Dana and better at getting what she wants. Earlier Melissa had been kneeling on her bed with her elbows and chin on the windowsill, looking at the moon. Melissa sure does like looking at the moon. Right now, against the opposite wall, Dana has the best view of the moon. She would like to visit the moon someday. She suspects this will not actually happen.

Melissa hadn't closed the curtains all the way before they went to bed and now weak moonlight makes a path along the floor before crawling across her toes and bending at the wall. Dana listens carefully to the moonlight and to everything else because something woke her up and she wants to know what. She doesn't have to go to the bathroom. She hasn't had a bad dream.

It's very quiet. Dana notes that there aren't even any vehicles moving around outside. The wind stirs the curtains, sending the shadow-creatures scurrying, and Dana shivers and pulls the covers up to her chin. It was sticky-hot in the daytime but the night is blessedly cool.

Across the narrow room Dana has to share with her sister, Melissa sleeps on. She has her pillow over her head. If she's snoring, she's quiet enough that Dana can't hear. She can't figure out what could have made her wake up.

After a few more minutes, Dana gives up. She turns her pillow over so she can feel the cool side against her cheek while she tries to go back to sleep, and it's just then that she does hear a noise. It's long and low, like a moan, but at the same time not like a moan at all. If this were an old house in a book, or even her grandparents' house, Dana knows the noise would just be the noise a well-lived in house makes as it settles in for a long summer night.

Their house is not at all old.

Seconds earlier Dana had squeezed her eyes shut before she knew what she was doing. Now she sneaks fleeting, furtive looks at the shadows that gather in the corners and the curtains, and at Melissa. She sees nothing that was not already there. She doesn't think she imagined the sound, but it's quiet now and Dana is safe in her bed. She has dropped her head back down to her pillow and is scrunching down under the covers when she hears the noise again.

It sounds louder this time, and closer, and Dana stays very still. She can feel her heart pounding.

If there's something in the house, Dana knows she should wake her parents. Her mother is here and her father too. He's on leave. Dana is happy about this and also a little bit on edge. She is held to higher standards when her father is home. Her mother is more picky and Melissa is more bratty and Dana doesn't understand why.

Bill and Charlie are at Nana and Grandpa's right now. Her grandparents only take two of their grandchildren at a time. Because Nana and Grandpa are old and four children is too many to handle, her mother says. Dana doesn't think she is particularly rambunctious. Neither is Bill, really, although Bill is plenty good enough at causing trouble in sneakier ways. But Melissa and Charlie are. Rambunctious. Usually Dana visits once a year with Charlie and Melissa goes with Bill. But in the spring Nana and Grandpa moved out of their solid, comfortable house that Dana has always loved into a two-bedroom apartment. Dana and Melissa will visit their grandparents together next month. Dana's not sure what she thinks about this yet. Nana and Grandpa had phoned last Sunday and when

Charlie had boasted on the phone about what a swell time he was having. But Nana and Grandpa had lived in their old house since long before Dana was born and she had been used to it always being there, in the same place every time she visited and only four blocks from the creek, overflowing with houseplants and books and the neighbours' children. Melissa is exhausting to be around and she doesn't seem to like Dana very much, most of the time.

Dana hears another almost-moan, this one following by a terrible scraping sound. Dana has half-convinced herself she has been imagining things. She jumps a little bit without meaning too and bangs her elbow on her bedside table by accident. "Melissa," she says urgently, before she can stop herself. "Missy!"

But Melissa sleeps on. Dana thinks rapidly. It's not a ghost. They're the first family to live in this house and no one has died here yet. It's probably not an intruder. The base is secure and so is this house. Her father won't let anything happen to anyone. Her mother locks all the doors and windows before going to bed. Dana's eyes flick to the window, but there's a screen and the glass frame is only open a crack. There's not enough room for an animal to get in, even a very small animal. Dana doesn't want the noise to be an animal noise, but she makes herself listen carefully anyway. The noises have become louder and more frequent and Dana still can't figure out where they're coming from and she's starting to get scared for real. If the noise turns out to be caused by nothing much, Dana will be in trouble for waking everyone up. Still, she's starting to wish she had fetched her parents after all, back before the noises had started to sound like they were coming from—from—under her bed. All of a sudden Dana is at least as furious now as she is frightened.

Two can play this game. As silently as she can, Dana moves so her ear is right above the crack between her mattress and the wall. She listens. _Animals_ would not take breaths that sound suspiciously like human breaths. At least, not any animals Dana knows about. She shivers but she keeps listening. _Intruders_ would not take breaths that sound like stifled laughter. Her brothers are miles away. Melissa, though. _Melissa_.

Dana moves quickly and stealthily. She picks up the hard-backed book on her bedside table and throws it as hard as she can at her sister's bed. It makes a suspicious dent in the lump under the covers. The lump doesn't move. Dana takes a deep breath and makes her voice as steady as she can.

In a loud, clear whisper she says, "I know you're under there, Melissa Meredith Scully."

Something— _someone_ , Dana tells herself firmly— is under Dana's bed. She knows it even though whoever's there is now silent and still. The silence stretches and stretches. Dana bites down on her tongue in case she can't help screaming. She wishes hadn't been so quick to throw away her heaviest and best weapon. She wishes she wasn't too scared to retrieve it. Nobody likes a tattletale, but Dana doesn't like this, not anymore, and this is the only leverage she has. "If you don't come out right now, I'm telling Mom and Dad," she says. This time, she doesn't whisper. She wants to make sure whoever it is can hear the threat.

Several excruciatingly seconds pass. Dana wonders if it's really possible that she's feeling her heart pound in her throat instead of her chest. The whole world feels deathly quiet and Dana hopes that if she has to speak, she will be able to. What if—what if Melissa is still in her bed, sound asleep and dreaming up more ways to aggravate Dana and everyone else under the sun? What if she's not—what if whatever's under Dana's bed already has Melissa, what if Melissa cried out for help and that's what woke Dana up? Dana catalogues everything she can remember about waking up and afterwards, and tries to decide if any of her theories fit the available evidence. She's more startled than frightened when she realizes the room is no longer quiet. Scuffling sounds give way to a heavy, muffled sigh. Before Dana has a chance to react, Melissa is shimmying out from underneath Dana's bed.

"Well, you're no fun," Melissa announces. Like Melissa's opinion is news to Dana. She stomps over to the window. Dana takes the opportunity, while Melissa's back is turned, to stick her tongue out at her sister. It makes her feel a little bit better. Melissa yanks the window frame and the screen further open and the curtains further apart. Dana flips so she's facing the wall and decides she might as well try to go back to sleep.

She hears Melissa getting into bed and a minute or so later there's an ominous pause in her sister's rustling and shifting. Dana figures that's when she found Dana's book. If it weren't the middle of the night, if they weren't both conscious of having to be quiet, Melissa would probably throw it at Dana and that would be that. As it stands, Dana will be lucky if she gets it back that easily.

Dana tosses and turns, unable to sleep. She's mad at Melissa for scaring her and mad at herself for being scared. After thinking about it for a long time, she decides she's a little bit mad that it was only Melissa being obnoxious and not something more scary and more interesting. She's mad that Melissa has clearly gone right back to sleep and she's mad that they're both going to be grumpy the next day from not getting enough sleep. Tomorrow is going be hot enough and boring enough without being grumpy too. Dana kicks at the covers in frustration.

Melissa's voice, soft now, cuts through the silence. "Hey," she says. Dana doesn't say anything. "Well, anyway," Melissa says after a minute, "it's cooler over here by the window. I mean, if you're too hot or anything."

Dana grabs her pillow and plunks it down on the other bed. Too late, she realizes that she probably shouldn't have been so quick. What's done is done, though. The wind has died down and Dana figures it's not that much cooler over here, really. She settles in next to Melissa, then looks across the room at her empty bed, at the gaping darkness beneath it.

"I'm still mad at you," she whispers to Melissa.

"I know," Melissa whispers back. "How did you figure out it was me?" Melissa uses the tone she uses when she wants to seem less interested in what Dana has to say than she actually is. Dana would be dying to know too, if she were Melissa. She shrugs. In the silence that follows, she can practically hear Melissa calculating her next move.

After a while, Melissa offers, "Katie Johnson said _her_ little sister screamed so loud she raised the dead." Melissa can make her voice sound deliciously creepy when she wants to. Dana shivers, but she isn't going to let herself get distracted.

"Yeah, but," argues Dana, "Lily Johnson is _stupid_." They were in the same class for three whole months last year so Dana can speak with some authority on the subject of Lily Johnson. Melissa waits. Dana racks her brain for the most stupid thing Lily has ever said or done. There's a lot to choose from. "She wants to be a dolphin when she grows up," Dana finally offers.

"Really?" says Melissa, and now she sounds like she actually is interested in what Dana's saying.

"Well, she probably knows she can't really be, anyway," says Dana.

"Oh," says Melissa, disappointed. "Besides, you _like_ being scared," she argues. "You watch scary stuff on TV all the time."

Dana flips around to face her sister. "You didn't do it because you thought I would _like_ it," she says fiercely.

"Hey, keep it down," Melissa warns. "You're going to wake Mom and Dad and then we'll both get in trouble, not just me."

Dana scowls at Melissa until Melissa's dramatic sign tells Dana that she's about to give in. "You're right, okay?" Melissa pokes Dana in the side. "Happy?"

Dana swats Melissa's hand away and considers this. She is less mad than she was before, definitely. And she misses this. They had tried to go to sleep in the same bed all the time when they were younger. They had stayed up too late, egging each other one until their mother or Bill Junior, or, much less often, their father came in and told them to be quiet, or worse, threatened to separate them.

"I guess," Dana says.

"I guess," Melissa mocks. "I guess—" and she scoots closer to the wall to get away from Dana's pinching fingers, "—I guess it would be pretty neat to be a dolphin though, " she says, like Dana doesn't know that's not what she was going to say. She sounds a little bit wistful.

"I won't visit you at the aquarium, " Dana informs her, and beside her, in the dark, she can hear Melissa's soft laughter. Dana realizes that she herself is smiling. She decides she might as well not bother to stop.

Melissa turns her pillow over and closes her eyes like she's getting ready to go to sleep. Dana stares at the ceiling by the door where the weak light from the moon and the far-away stars make a patchwork. She wonders if starlight makes you see stardust, like the way you can see dust in sunlight. "Hey, " she says. She leans on her elbows and studies Melissa. "You're not sneezing. "

"Yeah, " Melissa grins. "I dusted under your bed yesterday when you were at the library. "

Dana is kind of impressed. Then her sister yawns into the crook of her elbow and Dana yawns without meaning to just because Melissa did, and she remembers that she's not finished being mad at Missy yet.

Melissa tugs at Dana's arm. "C'mon, " she says. Dana lies back down and Melissa pulls the blankets up over them both. "Sleep."

Dana kicks her feet free because it's still too hot to be covered up. Maybe if it's hot again tomorrow they can go swimming at the pool at the high school. Eventually, she falls asleep to the steady rhythm of her sister's breath and the soft rustle of the wind in the bushes. She dreams she's a dolphin, the kind of dolphin who travels far and fast and deep enough to explore the shadowy depths at the very bottom of the ocean.


End file.
